Ladder of Years Read online

  Sam didn’t even remember that meeting. He claimed he’d first seen her when he came to dinner. It was true there had been such a dinner, on the evening of that same day. Eliza had cooked a roast and Linda had baked a cake (both advertising their housewifely skills), while Delia, the baby, still two months short of her eighteenth birthday and supposedly not even in the running, sat across from Sam and her father in the living room and sipped a grown-up glass of sherry. The sherry had tasted like liquefied raisins and flowed directly to that powerful new root of longing that branched deeper minute by minute. But Sam claimed that when he first walked in, all three girls had been seated on the couch. Like the king’s three daughters in a fairy tale, he said, they’d been lined up according to age, the oldest farthest left, and like the woodcutter’s honest son, he had chosen the youngest and prettiest, the shy little one on the right who didn’t think she stood a chance.

  Well, let him believe what he wanted. In any case, it had ended like a fairy tale.

  Except that real life continues past the end, and here they were with air-conditioning men destroying the attic, and the cat hiding under the bed, and Delia reading a paperback romance on the love seat in Sam’s waiting room—the house’s only refuge, since the office and the waiting room were air-conditioned already. Her head was propped on one arm of the love seat, and her feet, in fluffy pink slippers, rested on the other. Above her hung her father’s framed Norman Rockwell print of the kindly old doctor setting his stethoscope to the chest of a little girl’s doll. And behind the flimsy partition that rose not quite all the way to the ceiling, Sam was explaining Mrs. Harper’s elbow trouble. Her joints were wearing out, he said. There was a stupefied silence; even the electric saw fell silent. Then, “Oh, no!” Mrs. Harper gasped. “Oh, my! Oh, my heavens above! This comes as such a shock!”

  A shock? Mrs. Harper was ninety-two years old. What did she expect? Delia would have asked. But Sam said, gently, “Yes, well, I suppose …” and something else, which Delia couldn’t catch, for the saw just then started up again as if all at once recalling its assignment.

  She turned a page. The heroine was touring the hero’s vast estate, admiring its magnificent grounds and its tasteful “appointments,” whatever those might be. So many of these books had wealthy heroes, Delia had noticed. It didn’t matter about the women; sometimes they were rich and sometimes they were poor, but the men came complete with castles and a staff of devoted servants. Never again would the women they married need to give a thought to the grinding gears of daily life—the leaky basement, the faulty oven, the missing car keys. It sounded wonderful.

  “Delia, dear heart!” Mrs. Harper cried, staggering out of the office. She was a stylish, silk-clad skeleton of a woman with clawlike hands, which she stretched toward Delia beseechingly. “Your husband tells me my joints have just ground themselves down to nubbins!”

  “Now, now,” Sam protested behind her. “I didn’t say that exactly, Mrs. Harper.”

  Delia sat up guiltily and smoothed her skirt. She grew aware of the bunny ears on her slippers and the temptress on the cover of her book. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Harper,” she said. “Should I schedule another appointment?”

  “No, he says I have to go to a specialist. A man I don’t know from Adam!”

  “Get her Peterson’s phone number, would you, Dee?” Sam asked.

  She rose and went over to the desk, scuffing along in her slippers. (Mrs. Harper herself wore sharp-toed high heels, which she kept planted on the rug in a herringbone pattern to show off her trim ankles.) Delia flipped through Rolodex cards arranged not by name but by specialty—allergy, arthritis. … Nowadays, this office served most often as a sort of clearinghouse. Her father used to deliver babies and even performed the more elementary surgeries once upon a time, but now it was largely a matter of bee shots in the spring, flu shots in the fall; and as for childbirth, why, these patients were long past the age. They were hand-me-downs from her father, most of them. (Or even, Sam joked, from her grandfather, who had opened this office in 1902, when Roland Park was still country and no one batted an eye at running a practice out of a residence.)

  She copied Dr. Peterson’s number onto a card and passed it to Mrs. Harper, who examined it suspiciously before tucking it into her bag. “I trust this person is not some mere snip of a boy,” she told Sam.

  “He’s thirty if he’s a day,” Sam assured her.

  “Thirty! My grandson is older than that! Oh, please, can’t I go on seeing you instead?” But already knowing his answer, she turned without a pause toward Delia. “This husband of yours is a saint,” she said. “He’s just too good to exist on this earth. I hope you realize that.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You make sure you appreciate him, hear?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Harper.”

  Delia watched Sam escort the old woman to the door, and then she dropped back onto the love seat and picked up her book. “Beatrice,” the hero was saying, “I want you more than life itself,” and his voice was rough and desperate—uncontrolled, was the way the author put it: uncontrolled, and it sent a thrill down her slender spine within the clinging ivory satin of her negligee.

  Maybe, instead of running into Adrian, she could just sit still and let him track her down. Maybe he was even now dwelling on his image of her and cruising the streets in search of her. Or he had looked up her address, perhaps; for he did know her last name. He was parked down the block at this very moment, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

  She took to stepping into the yard several times a day. She seized any excuse to arrange herself on the front-porch swing. Never an outdoor person, and most certainly not a gardener, she spent half an hour posed in goatskin gloves among Eliza’s medicinal herbs. And after someone telephoned but merely breathed and said nothing when she answered, she jumped up at every new call like a teenager. “I’ll get it! I’ll get it!” When there weren’t any calls, she made a teenager’s bargains with Fate: I won’t think about it, and then the phone will ring. I’ll go out of the room; I’ll pretend I’m busy and the phone will ring for sure. Shepherding her family into the car for a Sunday visit to Sam’s mother, she moved fluidly, sensuously, like an actress or a dancer conscious every minute of being watched.

  But if someone really had been watching, think of what he would see: the ragged disarray of Delia’s home life. Ramsay, short and stone-faced and sullen, kicking a tire in disgust; Carroll and Susie bickering over who would get a window seat; Sam settling himself behind the wheel, pushing his glasses higher on his nose, wearing an unaccustomed knit shirt that made him look weak-armed and fussy. And at the end of their trip, the Iron Mama (as Delia called her)—sturdy, plain Eleanor Grinstead, who patched her own roof and mowed her own lawn and had reared her one son single-handed in that spotless Calvert Street row house where she waited now, lips clamped tight, to hear what new piece of tomfoolery her daughter-in-law had contrived.

  No, not a one of them would bear up beneath the celestial blue gaze of Adrian Bly-Brice.

  The oldest of the air-conditioning men, the one named Lysander, asked what those hay-bunch things were doing, hanging from the attic rafters. “Those are my sister’s herbs,” Delia said. She hoped to let it rest at that, but her sister happened to be right there in the kitchen with her, stringing beans for supper, and she told him, “Yes, I burn them in little pots around the house.”

  “You set fire to them?” Lysander asked.

  “Each one does something different,” Eliza explained. “One prevents bad dreams and another promotes a focused mind and another clears the atmosphere after interpersonal strife.”

  Lysander looked over at Delia, raising his gray toothbrush eyebrows.

  “So anyhow,” Delia said hastily. “Is this job about wrapped up, do you think?”

  “This one here? Oh, no,” he said. He plodded toward the sink; he had come down to refill his thermos. Waiting for the water to run cold, he said, “We got several more days, at the least.”


  “Several days!” Delia squawked. She cleared her throat. “But the noisy part: will that be over soon? Even the cat is getting a headache.”

  “Now, how would you know that?” he asked.

  “Oh, Delia can read a cat’s mind,” Eliza told him. “She’s got all of us trained in cat etiquette: what kind of voice to use with them and how to do your eyes when you look at them and—”

  “Eliza, I need those beans now,” Delia broke in.

  Too late, though: Lysander snorted as he set his thermos under the faucet. “Me, I’ll take a dog any day,” he said. “Cats are too sneaky for my taste.”

  “Oh, well, I like dogs too, of course,” Delia said. (In fact, she was slightly afraid of dogs.) “It’s just that dogs are so … sudden. You know?”

  “But honest,” Lysander said. It sounded like an accusation. “Okay if I swipe a few ice cubes?”

  “Go right ahead,” Delia told him.

  He stood there helplessly, clasping the neck of his thermos, until she realized that he meant for her to get them. He would be one of those men who didn’t know where their wives kept the spoons. She dried her hands on her apron and went to fetch the bin from the freezer.

  “Last place we worked?” he said. “Putting in a new heat pump? Guy next door owned one of them attack dogs. Dog trained to attack. Lady we was working for warned us all about him.”

  He kept a staunch grip on his thermos while Delia tried to fit an ice cube in. It wouldn’t go. She hit it with the flat of her hand (Lysander not even flinching) and, “Eek!” she cried, for the ice cube flew up in the air and then skittered across the floor. Lysander stared down at it dolefully.

  “Just let me at this little devil,” Delia told him, and she snatched the thermos from him and slammed it into the sink. She ran water over a second ice cube. “Aha!” she crowed, pounding it in. She started working on a third.

  Lysander said, “So we’re hauling in stuff from the truck one day, come to see the attack dog rounding the side of the house. Big old bristle-necked dog like a wolf, growling real deep in his throat. Lord, I thought I would die. Then out steps the lady we worked for like she had just been waiting for this. Says, ‘Come along,’ and takes hold of his collar, calm-natured as you please. Walks him into the yard next door and, ‘Mr. What’s-it?’ she calls. ‘I’m about to shoot your dog dead unless you come out this minute and retrieve him.’ With her voice just as clear, just as cool. That was some kind of woman, believe me.”

  Why was he telling this story? Was it meant to show Delia up? She dispatched the third ice cube with as little commotion as possible. For some reason, she imagined that the woman had resembled Rosemary Bly-Brice. Maybe she was Rosemary Bly-Brice. She wore an expression of tolerant detachment; she bent in a graceful S-curve; she hooked a single finger through the dog’s spiked collar. Unexpectedly, Delia felt a rush of admiration, as if her entrancement with Adrian extended to his wife as well.

  She turned off the faucet, picked up the thermos, and offered it to Lysander. “Why, looky there,” Lysander said. Water was dripping rapidly from the bottom of the thermos. “Why, you’ve gone and broke it,” he said.

  Delia didn’t apologize. She went on offering the thermos, wishing he would just take it and leave. In the supermarket, she recalled at that instant, she had made some reference to Ramsay, and Adrian had assumed she meant her husband. No wonder he hadn’t come by yet! He’d been looking for Ramsay Grinstead, who wasn’t in the phone book. Sooner or later, though, he would realize his mistake. She began smiling at the thought, and she continued holding the thermos out until Eliza, clucking, rose to fetch the mop.

  In the dark the phone rang twice, and Delia woke with a start. She was reviewing her children’s whereabouts even before her eyes were fully open. All three were safe in bed, she decided, but her heart went on racing anyhow.

  “Hello?” Sam said. “Yes, this is Dr. Grinstead. Oh. Mr. Maxwell.”

  Delia sighed and rolled over. Mr. Maxwell was married to the Dowager Queen of Hypochondria.

  “How long has she been experiencing this?” Sam asked. “I see. Well, that doesn’t sound serious. Yes, I’m sure it is uncomfortable, but I doubt very much if—”

  A miniature babbling sound issued from the receiver.

  “Of course she does,” Sam said. “I understand. All right, Mr. Maxwell—if you think it’s that important, I’ll come take a look.”

  “Oh, Sam!” Delia hissed, sitting up.

  He ignored her. “See you in a few minutes, then,” he was telling Mr. Maxwell.

  As soon as he had replaced the receiver, Delia said, “Sam Grinstead, you are such a patsy. You know it’s going to be nothing. Why can’t he take her to the emergency room, if she’s so sick?”

  “Well, neither one of them drives anymore,” Sam said mildly. He swung his feet to the floor and reached for his trousers, which lay folded over the back of the rocker. As always, he’d worn tomorrow’s underwear to bed and placed tomorrow’s clothes conveniently at hand.

  Delia pressed a palm to her heart, which was only now settling down. Was this anything like what Sam had felt with his chest pains? She kept trying to imagine. Think of him operating a car at such a time—humming along toward a meeting and then noticing his symptoms and smoothly, composedly (she pictured) turning his wheel toward Sinai Hospital. Arranging his own admission and asking a nurse to phone Delia and break the news by degrees. (“Your husband wants you to know he’ll be a tad bit later getting home than planned.”) And Delia, meanwhile, had been reading Lucinda’s Lover by the fire, without a qualm.

  She switched on her lamp and climbed out of bed. Two-fifteen, the alarm clock said. Squinting against the light, Sam reached for his glasses and put them on to look at her. “Where are you off to?” he asked. The glasses made his face seem crisper, less vague around the eyes, as if they had corrected Delia’s vision rather than his.

  She drew her ruffled housecoat over her nightgown and zipped the front before she answered. “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I’ll take you in my car.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “I just want to, that’s why,” she said. She tied her sash very tight, in hopes her housecoat would pass for streetwear. As she stepped into her flats, she could feel him staring at her, but all she said was, “Ready?” She collected her keys from the bureau.

  “Delia, are you doubting my ability to drive my own car anymore?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, no! What a thought!” she told him. “But I’m awake, why not come with you? Besides, it’s such a nice spring night.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he offered no more arguments when she led the way downstairs.

  It was not a nice spring night at all. It was cool and breezy, and she wished for a sweater as soon as they stepped out the back door. Towering, luminous clouds scudded across an inky sky. But she headed toward her car at a leisurely pace, resisting the urge to hunch her shoulders against the chill. The streetlights were so bright that she could see her shadow, elongated like a stick figure in a child’s drawing.

  “This makes me think of Daddy,” she said. She had to speak up, since Sam had walked over to his Buick to retrieve his black bag. She hoped he didn’t hear the shiver in her voice. “All the house calls I used to make with Daddy, just the two of us! Seems like old times.”

  She slid behind her steering wheel and reached across to unlock the passenger door. The air inside the car felt refrigerated. It even smelled refrigerated—dank and stale.

  “Of course, Daddy never let me drive him,” she said when Sam had got in. Then she worried this would give him second thoughts, and so she added, laughing slightly, “You know how prejudiced he was! Women drivers, he always said …” She started the engine and turned on her lights, illuminating the double doors of the garage and the tattered net of the basketball hoop overhead. “But whenever I was still up, he’d say I could come with him. Oh, I tagged along many
a night! Eliza just never was interested, and Linda was so, you know, at odds with him all the time, but I was ready at a moment’s notice. I just loved to go.”

  Sam had heard all this before, of course. He merely settled his bag between his feet while she backed the car out of the driveway.

  Once they were on Roland Avenue, she said, “In fact I ought to come with you more often, now the kids are growing up. Don’t you think?” She was aware that she was chattering, but she said, “It might be kind of fun! And it’s not as if you go out every night, or even every week anymore.”

  “Delia, I give you my word I am still capable of making the odd house call without a baby-sitter,” Sam told her.

  “Baby-sitter!”

  “I’m strong as an ox. Stop fretting.”

  “I’m not fretting! I just thought it would be romantic, something the two of us could do together!” she said.

  This wasn’t the whole truth, but as soon as she said it she started to believe it, and so she felt a bit hurt. Sam merely sat back and gazed out the side window.

  There was almost no traffic at this hour, and the avenue seemed very flat and empty, shimmering pallidly beneath the streetlights as if veiled by yellow chiffon. The newly leafed trees, lit from below, had a tumbled, upside-down look. Here and there a second-floor window glowed cozily, and Delia sent it a wistful glance as they passed.